"I'd like to live to a hundred," Muhammad Ali told Esquire some years ago. And while he still has 29 years to go, it appears, thankfully, that Sunday's report of his imminent demise was unfounded. Ali's brother, Rahman, told the British Sun, a tabloid not above publishing mere speculation, that the former heavyweight champ, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, "can't speak -- he doesn't recognize me." Rahman Ali went on: "He's in a bad way. He's very sick. It could be months, it could be days. I don't know if he'll last the summer. He's in God's hands. We hope he gently passes away."

Rubbish, said Muhammad Ali's daughters, who posted on Twitter a picture of their father watching the Super Bowl.

"These rumors pop up every once in a while but there's nothing to them," she said. "He's fine."

No doubt, when the great fighter and humanitarian does pass, tributes will pour in from every corner of the Earth. But there's no reason not to celebrate his life at this moment or any other. He's a great character who has great character, whose mouth fired as fast as his hands and who led by example in support of civil rights and in opposition to the Vietnam War. The world's best fighter refused induction and went to jail, memorably saying, "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong."

I came back to Louisville after the Olympics with my shiny gold medal. Went into a luncheonette where black folks couldn't eat. Thought I'd put them on the spot. I sat down and asked for a meal. The Olympic champion wearing his gold medal. They said, "We don't serve niggers here." I said, "That's okay, I don't eat 'em." But they put me out in the street. So I went down to the river, the Ohio River, and threw my gold medal in it.

In later years, as the country changed so too did Ali, becoming less of a fiery presence than an avuncular one. "I just wish people would love everybody else the way that they love me," he said. "It would be a better world."